Calle Hermenegilda Martínez

The name points to a person, Hermenegilda Martínez, and there ends what is known. The dedication dates from 1928, in the Chamartín district, and with it there is no trade, no dates, no reason. The tribute survives; the woman honoured was left without a biography. Hermenegilda Martínez runs through the heart of the Cruz del Rayo estate, held to be the first historic garden colony of Madrid, promoted around 1928 by the state civil servants' cooperative on what had been the outskirts. Low villas, private gardens, quiet streets. Tradition explains the estate’s name by an iron cross that a bolt of lightning left twisted. For a woman to receive a street in 1928, outside of saints and queens, was uncommon. She may have been a benefactor of the cooperative or a relative of some official, but there is no record. Today she still names about a hundred metres of asphalt whose origin was left undocumented.